Feisty Gingrich stakes campaign on electability

AP via SFGate ^ | 1/28/12 | STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press

[SmithL]

Sarasota, Fla. (AP) -- Newt Gingrich has staked his presidential bid on the idea that he's best positioned to defeat President Barack Obama. Yet even some supporters seem to be struggling to buy that claim, an indication that efforts by chief rival Mitt Romney to undercut him may be working.

"Beating Obama is more important than everything else," Patrick Roehl, a 51-year-old computer software engineer, said at a Gingrich rally inside a Sarasota airport hangar this past week. "Can Newt win? I'm not sure. He's got a lot of high negatives. The elections are won and lost in the middle. I'm not sure he appeals to the middle."

John Grainger, a 44-year-old assistant golf pro, doesn't like Romney. But he's having trouble shaking skepticism about Gingrich.

"I want to be a Newt supporter," he said. "This guy's going to have the guts to stand up and speak his piece — no holds barred." But Grainger said he wasn't quite ready to back the former House speaker.

Interviews with more than a dozen Republican voters at Gingrich's overflowing rallies ahead of Tuesday's primary suggest that many Florida voters love his brash style as they look for someone to take it to Obama. But these voters also have lingering doubts about whether Gingrich really is Obama's most serious threat.

Romney and his allies are working to stoke those doubts, and the GOP's establishment wing has started to help the former Massachusetts governor try to make that case.

[EGPWS]

"Can Newt win? I'm not sure.

Mini0bama is considered more electable against 0bama than Newt is?

If it weren't so serious an election it would be laughable.

What the he!! is wrong with these people?

[jimbo123]

The guy quoted in this article sounds like a Romney plant. Conveniently regurgitates the RINO GOP-E talking points verbatim for the Associated Press.

[napscoordinator]

If Newt would have had a great debate the other night none of these stories would be coming up. I am so mad that he let Romney get the best of him especially that horrible Fanny-Freddie stock disaster. Why Newt didn't know he had Fanny-Freddie Mae stock in his mutual funds is beyond me. I think that was a very critical mistake and why he is down in Florida. I think that is the ONLY reason he is down in Florida. If he at least would have come back with a great rebuttal on that it would not have hurt him. But he stood there for a minute with a shocked look on his face. That was the worst mistake he has ever made IMHO. He needs to do something incredible in the next three days.

[TomGuy]

I just don’t see Gingrich as being that electible.

If he things Bloody Thursday was bad, see what he gets if he wins the nomination.

Muddy/Bloody October will make Bloody Thursday look like Saturday morning cartoons.

[TomGuy]

that horrible Fanny-Freddie stock disaster. Why Newt didn't know he had Fanny-Freddie Mae stock in his mutual funds is beyond me.

That was devastating.

Of course, for either, a simply correct response would have been: You don't 'own' stocks in mutual funds, you only own shares in the mutual funds. The Mutual Fund management determines what stocks and bonds they invest in.

[loveliberty2]

Gingrich is intellectually, and by a lifetime of study, qualified to craft an individual liberties, ideas-based campaign capable of exposing and defeating the "I-can-do-everything-for-you" enslaving ideas of Obama.

Romney displays no such study or grounding in principles underlying our freedom.

"Spending 25 years in the private sector" working and participating in the results of America's founding ideas does not, in itself, qualify one for defending the ideas that made it possible to do so.

When asked, Romney seems unable to set his answers in anything deeper than quotations from Reagan, patriotic songs, or familiar phrases from other speakers.

That kind of surface knowledge of the vast reservoir of ideas essential to liberty will not defeat an opponent who has immersed himself in the set of government-centered, tyrannical ideas to which he is committed and for which he has been mentored and trained to defend and cloak in a garment of benevolence.

Romney's offhandedness in describing the November 2012 opponent as just "in over his head" indicates unpreparedness for a battle of opposing ideas.

[Matchett-PI]

And there's this, too:

Of all the candidates, Newt is a Tea Partier from way back! --1994--

House Minority Whip Gingrich and 7th District congressional candidate Brenda Fitzgerald throw mock tea crates into the Chattahoochee River on April 15, 1994, as part of a "Taxpayer's Tea party" in Roswell, Georgia.

HERE: "Mitt Romney predicts tea party will turn on Newt Gingrich" ~ By Associated Press Saturday, December 17, 2011

TAX DAY 1994 - Politicians play with ire - Gingrich , others stage stunts touting frugality
The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - Saturday, April 16, 1994
Author: ALEXANDER, KATHEY, Kathey Alexander STAFF WRITER: STAFF

As procrastinators put the finishing touches on their tax returns Friday, politicians across the nation carried out carefully crafted stunts aimed at landing the votes of irate taxpayers.

In Roswell, U.S. House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) touted fiscal conservatism by staging a mock tea party on the banks of the Chattahoochee River . Conservative Republicans tossed empty produce crates into the river in symbolic re-enactment of the incident in Boston 221 years ago when colonists dressed as Indians dumped tea into the harbor in rebellion against the government.

More than 200 similar rallies occurred throughout the country, including Boston, San Francisco and Detroit , as candidates used the tax filing deadline as a forum for one-upsmanship on frugality.

“Americans literally work every day for months just to pay for a government that wastes their money,” said Gingrich , who is seeking re-election from the 6th district. “On the day taxes are due, we should remind you that you have every right as a citizen to protect yourself, your family and your wallet with your vote.”

(snip) HERE:--56posted on Saturday, January 28, 2012 11:38:18 AMby maggief

[RedMDer]

Click to view video
2008 Flashback: Michele Bachmann Gushes Over Newt Gingrich
Go Newt!

Click to Donate to Free Republic


Support Free Republic!

[loveliberty2]

Thanks! That article needs to be circulating on all conservative sites and, especially, in Florida today and tomorrow.

There are no perfect men or women to carry the conservative message, unfortunately. All are flawed vessels in which truth may be carried from one generation to the other. Now may be such a time, when liberty is threatened and when the darkness of totalitarianism may sneak up on America in the guise of benevolence by government.

[Matchett-PI]

You’re welcome! I agree. bttt